One day at time, in good taste.

I'm sober. All the way. Not sober from alcohol, not sober-ish, not sober with an asterisk for the things that don't count. It took a while to get here. I've been sober, and I've been not sober, and then sober again. I tried the version where you put down the drink and keep everything else. That one never held. So now it's all of it, and I'm not counting anything as not counting. Except nicotine. I vape, and I'm saying so up front, because leaving it out would make this sound like a wellness brand and it isn't one. I'm not a monk. I'm a person with one non-negotiable and a few habits still standing. You'll also notice I haven't told you my name. I'd love to tell you that's mystique. Really I'm just not ready yet, and I will almost certainly blow it myself, probably by posting a photo with my own reflection in it. I grew up bicoastal, South Florida and Marin, one ocean and then the other. Now I'm in the Pacific Northwest. Which means I've been sober in a lot of rooms built for people who aren't. The club. The tailgate. The wedding. The boat. The porch at five o'clock. The long table where the wine goes around twice before anyone eats. I have also been in every one of those rooms not sober, and that was the lonelier version by a mile. I would show up put together. Right dress, right hair, right amount of laughing at the right moments. And then somewhere in the middle of it I would come apart. I would like to tell you nobody noticed. People noticed. That is what I mean by the pain and the isolation and what I can only call a pitiful and incomprehensible demoralization. Not that I hid it well. That I didn't, and I walked back in the next weekend anyway, certain it would go differently. I have a program. It works, I'm steadfast about it, and it is not what this is. What I didn't have, what nobody handed me, was the rest of it. The other twenty-three hours. A way to walk into all of it still looking and sounding like myself, without a mocktail in my hand doing the explaining. So I'm building that. Preppy Sober is for people who quit and didn't want a personality transplant thrown in. You get to keep the grosgrain, the linen, the traditions, the whole look of the life. The people are the part that sorts itself out. Some of them come with you. Some of them don't, and you find out which is which faster than you'd like. Be the most fun person in the room. Just don't drink while you're in it. And you don't need a rock bottom to be here. Some of you are done and you know it. Some of you are just tired of feeling like garbage on Sunday, or you're taking a month to see, or you're sober curious and not ready to call it anything more than that. All of it counts. My line sits where it does because of my own history, not because there's a bar to clear at the door. Somewhere to belong, things worth wearing, and a way to talk about this that doesn't sound like an apology. Come as you are. Come sober, or come curious.